Tiffany Tsao reviews The Pillow Book by Jee Leong Koh

The Pillow Book

by Jee Leong Koh

Math Paper Press, 2012

ISBN: 978-981-07-3078-9

Reviewed by TIFFANY TSAO

In taking its title and opening epigraph from one of the first masterpieces of the zuihitsu tradition—the pillow book written by Sei Shōnagon in the tenth century—Koh’s own pillow book seems to invite close comparison. However, as the pieces that follow the epigraph unfold, one after the other, it becomes apparent that to yoke The Pillow Book too closely to its namesake would be to miss the point entirely. The book is a playful meditation on the liberating, not binding, aspects of similitude—the ability of many objects, people, places, moods, and moments to share and even multiply and nuance sameness without being reduced